So let me get this straight. Nokia claims that the Nexus 7 infringes upon standard essential wifi patents, and that Asus does not have a license. How in the name of hell is it possible that Asus has been shipping a gazillion wifi-enabled products every year for god knows how long now, and only now does Nokia notice? Wait - of course. Silly me. If you can't compete, litigate. D'oh.

Regardless of whether they're software or hardware patents, I would have thought that such things as the Nokia and the Motorola ones would be getting paid on a per-unit costing at the parts manufacturer end rather than the final assembly point. End of the day ASUS is merely an assembler - why doesn't Nokia go after the parts supplier failing to pay the necessary royalties on the hardware sold? from what it appears it would be like AMD making an Intel compatible implementation of a technology but Intel deciding to go after Dell or HP instead of AMD in regards to patents.

End of the day ASUS is merely an assembler - why doesn't Nokia go after the parts supplier failing to pay the necessary royalties on the hardware sold?

I've often wondered about this as well on numerous occasions. In this case, why not accuse Broadcom* who supposedly make the Wifi (+ Bluetooth) chipset?

Then again, I don't really know how this sort of thing works. Also, Nokia haven't really started any legal proceedings. Sure, a statement like this is usually followed by a bunch of overweight lawyers having a field-day, but let's just give Nokia the benefit of the doubt for now.

* according to the component analysis by Anandtech in their mini-review of the Nexus 7.